'They are intentionally starved and worked to death': The horrific conditions in North Korean labor camps

Otto
Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who was
detained in North Korea since early January, is taken to North
Korea's top court in Pyongyang in this photo released by Kyodo on
March 16.REUTERS/Kyodo

The distraught pleadings of the American college student sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in a
prison in North Korea for “crimes against the state” are sobering
when considering the details of what such punishment normally
entails.

The pariah state ruled three days ago that Otto Warmbier, 21,
from Cincinnati, Ohio, was guilty of a heinous political crime
committed with the “tacit connivance of the US government and its
manipulation” and deserved harsh treatment.

The crime the University of Virginia commerce student had
allegedly carried out was the petty theft of a political
propaganda poster from his vacation hotel in Pyongyang.

But hard labour in North Korean political prison camps, which
were first set up in the late 1940s or early 1950s, can be doled
out as punishment for the slightest perceived dissent towards the
totalitarian ruling dynasty.

Korean citizens who have survived the ordeal and escaped the
regime emerge with harrowing tales of the compatriots and family
members who didn’t make it — most killed off by the cruel
combination of prolonged near-starvation and slavish forced
labour.

“Conditions are horrific. People are worked for 14, 15 or 16
hours every day with just a handful of corn to live on and they
are intentionally starved and worked to death,” said Suzanne
Scholte, chairman of the North Korea freedom coalition, a group
of organizations based in Washington DC assisting defectors and
campaigning for improved human rights.

“Torture is common, there is no medical aid and the sanitation is
horrible. They wear the torn uniforms of old prisoners and sleep
crammed together in a room.”

Anyone
in North Korea who shows anything less than fierce loyalty to the
regime risks imprisonment in labour camps.Reuters/KCNA
KCNA

North Korea denies the existence of vast political prison camps,
but according to a 2014 UN special commission report, a
combination of satellite imagery and extensive human testimony
proves they are still in operation and are used to perpetrate
“unspeakable atrocities” on hapless citizens, who simply
disappear with no word to their families even if they
subsequently die in detention.

The UN reported systematic starvation, torture, rape and many
executions at such camps, which hold an estimated total of 80,000
to 120,000 prisoners in the most wretched conditions.

“The commission estimates that hundreds of thousands of political
prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five
decades,” the report said.

A 2009 legal report from South Korea cited prisoners being fed
starvation rations of a few ounces of rotten corn and some kind
of thin “salt soup”.

“They lose their teeth, their gums turn black, their bones weaken
and, as they age, they hunch over at the waist ... they live and
die in rags, without soap, socks or underwear,” the Washington
Post reported at the time.

Former prisoners sentenced to just 18 months hard labour recalled
fellow inmates not surviving amid the constant beatings and
malnutrition. They often work in the fields, logging in forests,
down mines with no safety measures or crude factories where
injuries are rampant, Scholte said.

The
entrance to a North Korean labor camp.www.vice.com/vice-news/north-korean-labor-camps-full-length

And in another account, a man who was arrested as a teenager
trying to sneak out of North Korea, Hyuk Kim, recalled subsisting
at a lower-level labour camp by catching rats, drying them out
and eating the flesh raw.

“If you tried to cook the rats, the guards would smell the meat
or fire, catch you and beat you mercilessly,” the 33-year-old
defector later said.

Campaigners said US student Warmbier would undoubtedly be
terrified of his prospects. He has been detained by the North
Korean authorities since late January and has had no contact with
his parents back home in Ohio.

Although Kim Jong-un is unpredictable, Scholte said it is
unlikely the young American would end up doing years of hard
labour in the country’s worst camps.

North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks at an emergency meeting of the
Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) Central Military Commission in
Pyongyang on August 21, 2015, in this undated photo released by
North Korea's Korean Central News Agency
(KCNA).KCNA

“This student will not be sent to one of these death camps
because they cannot let the world know that they are committing
these atrocities. They may put him to work in a labour camp but I
would suspect for six months or, I hope, less than a year. They
are going to use him and it will depend how much the US pushes
the regime to release him,” she said.

Scholte is taking part in a panel at the United Nations
headquarters in New York on Friday, where North Korean women who
have survived imprisonment and the daily deprivations and abuses
of ordinary life in the country are scheduled to relate their
experiences to the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, and
other leading figures.

American Kenneth Bae was released by North Korea in November 2014 after
almost two years imprisoned by the regime, for evangelizing
Christianity in the country, which is banned. He was forced to do
agricultural labour daily and suffered numerous health and
psychological problems, but returned home having been spared the
bulk of his 15-year sentence.

US
student Otto Warmbier speaks at a news conference in this undated
photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
in Pyongyang on February 29, 2016.REUTERS/KCNA

John Sifton, Asia policy director for Human Rights Watch, said
North Korea’s actions were becoming increasingly unpredictable
but praised the latest sanctions agreed by the US on Wednesday because they are
designed to protest not just North Korea’s nuclear weapons
aggression but also its despicable human rights record, he said.

“It’s a nightmare there — if you are really in trouble you get
sent to a camp where you will never come out. It’s astonishing in
2016 that this is still going on. However, this student is useful
to the North Korean regime and they may not want to work him to
death as they do their own citizens,” he said.